The Other Coneflower
When people talk about coneflowers, most often they mean Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). But there is another coneflower that is underutilized in home gardens. I speak of Yellow Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata).
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Notes from a wildlife-friendly cottage garden
Let’s talk about containers for sun, specifically the ones in our sunny front garden. Our year in containers got off to a rocky start, what with about 90% of my container tulips being killed by the polar vortex. The upside, I suppose, is that I could plant the containers without waiting for the tulips to finish blooming.
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Our Conca d’Or Lilies are blooming now. These are Oriental-Trumpet hybrids, also known as OT or Orienpet Lilies. I don’t like either of those names. Orienpet sounds too much like chiapet (“ch-ch-ch-chia!”). And when I hear OT I always think of “overtime”. Overtime Lilies would require time-and-a-half pay, double for holidays. So for me it’s Oriental-Trumpet.
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It’s a very peculiar thing. I used to have one clump of Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) in the Driveway Border, and now I have two.
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Beckee and Daniel were married in March, and I posted about it here. At the time I promised a follow-up post with some of the official photographs (rather than the ones Judy and I took with our phones). Well, here it is, sorry for the delay.
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If I were to sum up the current state of the front garden in 2 words, they would be: Bee Balm. Bee Balm, Bee Balm, Bee Balm. Specifically, Monarda didyma ‘Raspberry Wine’.
The Bee Balm is so visually dominant in part because so many other attention-grabbing plants are blooming late.
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Right now is this year’s peak for our Clematis ‘Jackmanii’. It covers most of the west-facing brick wall at the front corner of the house, which I like to call “The Great Wall of Purple”, though it is either white or green for most of the year.
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My So-Called Meadow
There is a part of the back garden where grass did not grow well, or at all. So I came up with the bright idea of turning it into what I called a “pocket meadow” consisting primarily of Pennsylvania Sedge (Carex pennsylvanica). My thought was that it would look like this, but it hasn’t worked out that way.
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What I Did About the Japanese Yew
You may recall a couple of posts during the spring where I talked about how I was removing a large Japanese Yew (Taxus cuspidata) from the southwest corner of the Back Garden, right next to the gate that opens up to the alley.
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